Exposure to community violence: Toward a more expansive definition and approach to research

Abstract

Community violence has been identified as a pressing public health crisis in the United States. A wealth of research establishes robust connections between youth's exposure to community violence and an array of negative psychological outcomes.In this article, we argue that developmental scientists need to adopt a more expansive definition of community violence and use a broader range of approaches to understand and intervene in the current epidemic of violence. First, we discuss problems with definitions of community violence in research and propose several types of violent incidents that should no longer be excluded (i.e., gender-based harassment, sexual assault). We also highlight the need for a more nuanced and thorough examination of the dimensions associated with community violence (e.g., severity, physical proximity, relational proximity, chronicity). Next, we discuss methodological problems encumbering research on community violence. Finally, we propose recommendations for research, emphasizing the need to account for children's intersecting social identities.

Adolescents' exposure to community violence and associations with after‐school activities across two samples

“…Community violence is typically measured as a composite index, representing an overall level of exposure during the past year or over a child's lifetime. Additionally, several measures of ECV distinguish between two types of violence: personal victimization (e.g., being attacked with a weapon) and witnessing violence (e.g., seeing someone else being attacked with a weapon; Brennan et al, 2007;Ceballo et al, 2022). Many urban adolescents are exposed to multiple types of community violence that fall within both categories of personal victimization and witnessing violence (Schwartz & Proctor, 2000).…”

An Exploratory Study on the Perceptions of Neighborhood Safety among Low-income Singaporean Families in Public Rental Housing and Purchased Public Housing

“…First, the present study could give a unique perspective of what community violence and perceptions of neighborhood safety looks like in a relatively safe country with low physical crime rates and in the housing context of Singapore. Second, exposure to community violence is typically measured as frequency of exposure or exposure/no exposure in most studies (Ceballo et al, 2022), including our previous study in which exposure to community violence was measured as a single binary score (i.e., exposure or no exposure) (Toh et al, 2021). However, there is greater complexity in adolescents' perceptions of neighborhood safety and community violence than can be captured by such quantitative measures.…”

“…Exposure to community violence is usually defined as exposure to incidents involving harm or threats of harm to individuals in neighborhoods, such as fights or shooting incidents PERCEPTIONS OF NEIGHBORHOOD SAFETY OF LOW-INCOME FAMILIES 4 (Ceballo et al, 2022;Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). However, given that it is illegal for a civilian to possess arms or ammunition (Attorney-General's Chambers of Singapore, 2021) and the generally low crime rates, it was surprising that almost half of the respondents were exposed to community violence.…”